Navarrette is also a CNN contributor who writes a weekly column for CNN.com on the issues of the day. His columns often provoke strong reactions, racking up as many as 800,000 page views, 11,000 reader comments, and dozens of emails.

On television, Navarrette has appeared on Lou Dobbs Tonight, Inside Politics, Paula Zahn Now, Anderson Cooper 360, The Chris Matthews Show, The O’Reilly Factor, Fox and Friends, Hardball with Chris Matthews, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, NOW with Bill Moyers, Erin Burnett OutFront, Rick’s List, and other shows. He also served as a panelist on PBS’ All-American Presidential Forum in June 2007, a primetime event where he joined moderator Tavis Smiley and other panelists in posing questions to Democratic presidential candidates.

On radio, Navarrette has appeared on nationally syndicated radio shows hosted by Bill Bennett, Lars Larson, Michael Reagan, Linda Chavez, and Laura Ingraham. He is currently a radio host at KOGO-600 AM in San Diego. He has done dozens of interviews on local radio shows and Sirius/XM. His writing has been praised on the nationally syndicated radio show hosted by Rush Limbaugh, where the host once read one of his columns to the show’s 20 million listeners. He has been a commentator on NPR’s “Tell Me More” with Michel Martin, “Talk of the Nation,” “The Diane Rehm Show,” “All Things Considered,” and “Morning Edition.” A radio talk show host who in 1994 had a three-hour daily show in Los Angeles, he has been a guest host in Phoenix, Dallas, San Diego, and Fresno, California. He has also served as a guest host for the nationally syndicated “The Michael Medved Show,” which airs in more than 200 markets. As of now, Navarrette is a co-host for Glenn Beck on The Blaze Radio Network with broadcast veteran Chris Salcedo and the host of his own daily podcast called “Navarrette Nation.”

A popular speaker on the national lecture circuit, Ruben Navarrette Jr. has addressed dozens of audiences at universities, conferences, and town halls since 1993. He has spoken at Harvard, Georgetown, Oberlin, Southern Methodist University, Wabash College, Colby College, UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, Hanover College, The University of San Diego, Oklahoma State University Tulsa, and the John F. Kennedy School of Government, among many others.

Navarrette is a graduate of Harvard College where he earned a bachelor’s degree in history in 1990 and a graduate of the John F. Kennedy School of Government where he earned a masters’ in public administration in 2000.

After college, he served as an extern for US Appellate Court Judge Alex Kosinski, taught at the K-12 level, and taught at California State University – Fresno. He is also a senior fellow at the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas.

He spent 12 years working for three major US newspapers: The Arizona Republic as a reporter and metro columnist, The Dallas Morning News as a member of the editorial board, and The San Diego Union-Tribune as a member of the editorial board.

Navarrette is the author of A Darker Shade of Crimson: Odyssey of a Harvard Chicano (Bantam, 1993). He’s also a contributor to the popular Chicken Soup for the Soul series, having published essays in both Chicken Soup for the Writer’s Soul and Chicken Soup for the Latino Soul. He has also contributed essays and columns to more than a dozen books, including Writing About Diversity (Harper-Collins), Debating Affirmative Action (Dell), Multicultural Reader (Kendall/ Hunt), The Resourceful Writer (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), and The Latino/a Condition (NYU Press).

As a freelance writer, Navarrette has contributed to The Wall Street Journal, The Denver Post, The Chicago Tribune, Texas Monthly, Hispanic Magazine, Latino Magazine, PODER Magazine, USA Today, VOXXI.com, & TIME.com. He is also a columnist for the Daily Beast, a contributor to the LA Archdiocese’s Angelus News, and a regular commentator on the Fox News Channel.

His awards and distinctions include being invited to judge the competition for the Pulitzer Prizes in 2013 and being nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary by the Washington Post Writers Group in 2012. He has also won notoriety for being a finalist for the Distinguished Writing Award for Editorial Writing from the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 2008, winning third place in column writing in the National Headliners Awards in 2006, winning first place in column writing from the California Newspaper Publishers Association in 2006, winning second place in column writing in the National Headliners Awards in 2004, and winning third place in the columnist category in the Arizona Press Club’s award competition.

Navarrette has also been invited to participate in several foreign leadership exchange programs, including the America’s Voice in Israel program in Jerusalem, the British American Project in Oxford, the Mexican/Mexican-American Solidarity Foundation Conference in Mexico City, and the American Swiss Foundation in Zurich.